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Stan Marsh
Stanley "Stan" Randall Marsh, voiced by Trey Parker, is one of the five main characters of South Park, along with Kyle, Kenny, Cartman and Butters. Character Stan is generally the most sensitive of the four boys. For example, in "Kenny Dies", he finds it difficult to see Kenny in his ill state, and in "Raisins" he becomes depressed after losing his girlfriend to Token. Stan is often preachy and very critical of popular trends. This is evident in "Cherokee Hair Tampons", when he challenged the character Miss Information and her shop of alternative medicine, in "Super Best Friends", when he helped battle David Blaine's suicidal cult, and in "The Biggest Douche in the Universe" where he accuses the psychic medium, John Edward, of being a fake. In this episode he also gained possession of his own show (while trying to prove that cold reading was fake) and battled with John Edward in a "Psychic Showdown". He also showed some heroism in "Cherokee Hair Tampons" by stating he would gladly donate a kidney to Kyle, even if it "hurt a whole lot". He was also the only one in South Park to stand up and help whales and dolphins that were being slaughtered by the Japanese. He was angry that the cast of "Whale Wars" wasn't doing enough to help whales and dolphins and took matters into his own hands. He is usually the one who is unaffected by the many scams, cults, and mass influences that South Park has been subjected to, and has a knack for seeing through falsely glorified practices and celebrities. However, sometimes Kyle takes on this role, and it is Stan who is the gullible one, such as with the metrosexual trend in the episode "South Park is Gay!". However, Stan is shown to have an overwhelmingly clearer understanding of scams and corporate corruption than anyone else in South Park, and has an especially good grasp of the dangers of cults. It is notable that he has a tendency to ridicule, make enemies out of, and/or bring shame to a very large number of celebrities that are shown in a poor light within the show. This may be because his father (Stan's major adult influence) has shown to be rather incompetent and immature, so Stan is suspicious and mistrustful of adults. Stan and Kyle's personalities tend to be similar, especially in the earlier seasons, but are not quite interchangeable, and they have developed more distinct and complex personalities during the show's run. Still, they are considered the closest friends out of the four, though it hasn't really been seen that Cartman and Kenny act/are best friends. It also shows Stan is a whale and dolphin lover and he tells the Japanese that it was a cow and a chicken that nuked Hiroshima, not a whale and a dolphin. It is also an ongoing mention in the series about Stan having major depressive disorder, though it is currently unclear if this is a serious claim or just a joke. He became terribly depressed and hopeless when Wendy broke up with him, and he briefly joined the Goth Kids. It is also mentioned that Stan has a substance abuse problem, like in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" when Cartman says that Stan has to lay off the cough syrup, and in "The Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka" where Jimbo goes on national television and accuses Stan of doing drugs. However, the only episodes that would back up these claims are "Quest For Ratings" where he gets high off cough syrup and "Red Man's Greed" when he "found the cure to SARS" by breathing in paint thinner. Finally, he might suffer from asthma, as Cartman takes his inhaler after successfully suing him in "Sexual Harassment Panda" Stan is an avid animal lover - he gets a dog in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride". He resists the influence of his uncle Jimbo to hunt in "Volcano" (he mentions this in "Death"), became a P.E.T.A. member in "Douche and Turd" (although he had the choice of joining them or being killed), tried to save baby cows in "Fun with Veal", and attempted to return a goat to its rightful owners in "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants". Although well-intentioned, these interventions often lead him and his friends into serious trouble. Stan (as well as the rest of the boys from 4th grade) also went to Mexico and managed to get the Mexican Space Program to take an Orca to the moon in a bid to save it (with all the kids in South Park having been led to believe he was a killer whale from the moon) in "Free Willzyx". In "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow", after he and Cartman crash a boat into a beaver dam and swim to shore, seeing the boat blow up, Stan says, "I hope we didn't hurt any beavers." In "Fun with Veal" he briefly turned to vegetarianism, but he quickly gave it up when he was plagued by a disease that literally "turned him into a pussy", sprouting actual vaginas on his body, a disease called Vaginitus. He also sets out to save the whales and dolphins from the Japanese in "Whale Whores". It is revealed in Rainforest Schmainforest that he is afraid of snakes. Stan is also quite empathetic, most evidently seen in the episode "Manbearpig", in which he partially defends Al Gore because he feels sorry for him, due to him "not having any friends". However when this pity backfires and lands him in a cave where Al Gore almost (un-intentionally) drowns him, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny, he lashes out and brings Al Gore into a cold, hard reality, shouting, "Stay away from us, asshole! I only felt sorry for you because you didn't have any friends! But now I know why you don't have any friends! You just use Manbearpig as a way of getting attention for yourself because you're a loser!" This doesn't affect Al Gore however; as he dons a cape and says he'll go and make a movie starring himself (An Inconvenient Truth). Ironically, Al Gore is also responsible for the deaths of Stan and everyone else in Imaginationland, even though they were revived by Butters. When angered however, Stan is often quite reluctant to continue/do anything that will further contribute to the obscurity or direness of the situation. Shown when in "Woodland Critter Christmas" after he finds out the Critters, whom he helped, were giving birth to the Anti-Christ, he decided not to attempt to set things right (although did eventually after much nagging from the episode's narrator) also in this episode, we found out that Stan was a Christian. Technically, though, this wasn't him - just a fictional version of him created by Eric Cartman for his Christmas story. For the first seven seasons of the show, Stan's sporadic girlfriend was Wendy Testaburger. In the early days of the series a running gag would be that Stan would throw up out of nervousness whenever Wendy spoke to him. As the show progressed, however, the Stan-Wendy storyline diminished greatly. In the penultimate episode of the seventh season, "Raisins", Wendy had Bebe tell Stan that "she breaks up", for Token, causing Stan to go into extreme depression and join the Goth Kids. He recovered, thanks to Butters, who was dealing with his own heartbreak and had decided that he'd rather be "a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid". Stan eventually got over the break-up by telling Wendy "you're a bitch" and flipping off Token ("Token, right here, buddy"). Wendy has played a much smaller part in the series since this episode. It became apparent that Stan had some lingering feelings for Wendy in the episode "Follow That Egg!" when he grew insanely jealous of Kyle working with her. He, however, decided to show her up by responding to her compliments with "as if I give a crap about what you think, Wendy." At the end of "The List", however, it is heavily implied that Stan and Wendy reconciled. They inadvertently have an adventure together, and at the end, Wendy admits to having a good time with Stan, and believe he's changed since they were last together. They lean in to kiss, but in a near-exact copy of a scene at the end of "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", Stan pukes on Wendy. Their status as boyfriend and girlfriend is affirmed in "Super Fun Time". Also, in season 13 episode "Butters' Bottom Bitch", Butters tries to get Wendy to work for him in his "Kissing Company" referring to her as a bitch and Stan says "Butters, Dude, you can't call my girlfriend a bitch" Stan is frequently embarrassed or infuriated at the stupidity of his parents (mostly Randy) and the other adults of the town, and he often goes against what his parents do. This is prominently shown in "My Future Self n' Me" when he finds out about the actor portraying his future self and goes so far as to trick Randy to cut the hand off of the actor to try and get them to admit they lied. In "Child Abduction is Not Funny", the escalating paranoia over child abductions leads the parents to send all the town's children away, in fear that they (the parents) will abduct their own kids. As the children wander off on their own, Stan remarks to Kyle, "Dude, sometimes I think our parents are really stupid," and as they rejoin their families at the conclusion of the episode, "Jesus Christ, dude, they've done some stupid crap before, but, Jesus Christ...". In "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow" he admits to breaking a beaver dam, and the adults assume he meant they all broke the dam. After several failed attempts to explain that it actually was him who broke the dam through everyone saying "I broke the dam", he shouted, "I BROKE THE FUCKING DAM!" and explained the exact sequence of events without any effect on the adults. The rather displaced cynicism that he exhibits when dealing with adults, as well as his inability to be impressed by celebrities or fads may also come from the fact that, due to his parents, he has probably never respected or trusted adults. Also in Crème Fraiche, he says 'You guys, my dad is retarded but he is not that retarded.' When Kyle, Kenny and Stan try and fool Randy so he can stop cooking. In "Trapped in the Closet", Stan was discovered to be the leader of Scientology having scored the highest thetan levels since L. Ron Hubbard and was quickly approached by Tom Cruise, whom Stan called an average actor. After hearing this Tom Cruise shouted, "I'm a failure in the eyes of the prophet!" and locked himself in Stan's closet. After unsuccessfully attempting to get him out, Stan shouts down the stairs to Randy, "DAD! Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet!" (Which is a reference to the rumors that Tom Cruise was gay, with "coming out of the closet" meaning when a gay man admits he is gay). Stan is later told that Scientology is a fake, and that if he writes anything almost everyone would believe it and he could make up to $3 million. Later on, when he reads his new writings to his loving public, his morality objected to it and he told everyone that Scientology was fake and that it wasn't the right way to answer the many questions. Stan was then sued by almost everyone, including Cruise and the head of the church, without anyone taking any action until he lost his temper, shouting, "Well go on then! SUE ME!" In "Douche and Turd", he is the only kid in the school who finds the option of voting between a giant douche and a turd sandwich "ridiculous", and is beleaguered by Kyle, the school officials and his parents, eventually bringing Puff Daddy to South Park to tell him about the Vote or Die campaign, and then chased Stan around town with a gun and literally told him to "vote or die". He is later banished from town for not voting and is rescued by PETA members, the leader of which tells him that in actuality all elections are between a douche and a turd, which convinces him to go back to town to vote. In "The Passion of the Jew", he is disgusted with The Passion of the Christ, calling it a "snuff film" and going, along with Kenny, to Mel Gibson's house to get their money back. Mel Gibson turns out to be insane and rabidly masochistic, and attacks the two of them with a gun in a manner reminiscent of Daffy Duck after Stan calls him "daffy". Stan and Kenny then steal the money from Gibson's wallet and flee back to South Park, pursued by him. Later, when Gibson asserts that Stan cannot say that his film sucks because it is saying that Christianity sucks, Stan counters by saying that Christianity is fine, but focusing on how people died ends up with really bad results, convincing the town that Mel Gibson was wrong all along. In "Are You There God? It's Me, Jesus", Stan is led to believe he is the only boy of the four that hasn't yet had his period, and is left out by the other three due to him not being "mature enough". He later uses the only question available for thousands of years to ask God (who had come down to Earth briefly) why he hasn't given him his period. After a long pause, God states the obvious: that he is a boy and shouldn't get periods. The episode ends with everyone chasing after Stan for using the only question on something so dumb. In "Fantastic Easter Special", he was made a member of a rabbit-worshipping cult-like group called "The Hare Club for Men", which his father, grandfather, and the entire male side of his family has been members in for generations. Category:South Park Category:Characters Category:Trey Parker Category:Matt Stone Category:Boys